The library’s innovative design celebrates the mystery, potential, and joy of knowledge. In the spirit of pioneering researchers, vigorous experimentation with organic shapes and elastic bodies was made to find the ideal form for the library, a process that revealed surprising similarities to types and tectonics found in classical architecture. The result is an education center that inspires and informs, serving the community and users, offering a sacred place of refuge as they consume information and expand their horizons.Our Istanbul Technical University Library design proposes a new information based program for the main university library but importantly envisions a innovative knowledge based experience for the whole ITU Maslak, Istanbul campus..Full integration with the site means that the experience of this library is not contained solely within the building but breathes outwards….to the adjacent playground, to the amphitheater, to the whole campus, and beyond. The terraces leading to the lake and weaving, expansive arcades make the interaction between site and building so strong that it is difficult to decide where one starts and the other begins—a sensation that is further enhanced by facades that use extensive greenery and organic shapes so effectively that the building appears to be part of the natural terrain, rising out of the ground over centuries, like a mighty tree.
The non-standard form is a natural result of an algorithmic generation of an architectural prime element, the stair. One of the most universally standard dimensions, 15cm x 30cm, represents an innate and essentially human idea of comfort and proportion, not specific to a single time period or culture, like the pursuit of learning. This core modular and its multiples stack upon one another, growing, twisting, turning, to create a structure that is both solid and hollow at the same time. This produces a skeleton that does not need to be obscured or hidden with foreign materials, because bookshelves, doorways, and other functions typically "applied” to other buildings already exist.
The design is based on an algorithmic generation of form acts as an interface between information and structure. The expansive modularity of the system creates a liquid, organic arrangement conducive to the flow of information in a new electronically mediated idea of the library as an interface. The ancient libraries of the east from Alexandria to Suleymaniye to Constantinople were centers of information and knowledge that is source for our concept of this library as a new icon of knowledge. Students and library users enter into this immersive experience picking their path through the library to discover data and information from the design of algorithmic structure of arcades. Overall this experience of the new library buildings seeks to open up Istanbul Technical University Library as innovative zone of expansive of form and structure to a 21st century idea of organic knowledge.